Bose-Einstein condensation of photons

Abstract

A Bose-Einstein condensate can be made of photons. The photons are held at thermodynamic equilibrium in a dye-filled microcavity and pumped with a laser. Thermalisation can be demonstrated and above the threshold a Bose-Einstein condensate will form. A Mach-Zehnder interferometer is built and used to measure the spatial and temporal first-order coherence under various conditions. We build a momentum-resolved spectrometer and use it to obtain views into the phase-space distribution of the photon condensate. We put an upper bound on the value of the interaction strength parameter and find that the microcavity system is ergodic even when not at thermal equilibrium. We build a setup to stabilise the pump laser power with the aim to observe the λ-point of the condensate.